Weekly News Clippings (May 1, 2014)

Tk 1,500cr (15 billion) lost for graft in 6 years (The Financial Express, May 1, 2014)
Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL) suffered revenue loss of at least Tk1,500 crore in last six years due to corruption, revealed a TIB study yesterday. Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) identified tampering with the BTCL's international call records as one of its major corrupted areas.  The state-owned telecom company during this period lost around Tk 1,500 crore in revenue due to tampering with international call records.

World Bank calls on Bangladesh to raise domestic natural gas prices (Business Day, April 30, 2014)
The World Bank has asked Bangladesh to raise its domestic natural gas prices after five years without an increase. Domestic natural gas prices in Bangladesh currently range from 93 cents/Mcf across residential, industrial, commercial and power generation sectors. The country purchases natural gas from international oil companies operating in the country in the much higher range of $2 – $4.50/Mcf. Bangladesh has not raised domestic natural gas prices since August 1, 2009, when tariffs for all types of consumers excluding CNG were raised by 11 percent.

NBR to slap higher taxes on new factories in Dhaka (The Daily Star, April 30, 2014)
The National Board of Revenue plans to impose higher taxes on fresh investments in setting up industrial units in Dhaka and its surrounding areas."It is often said that Dhaka has become an unlivable city for increased congestion and industrialisation. According to the NBR Chairman MdGhulamHussain, new industrial plants should not be allowed in Dhaka and its adjacent areas for the sake of livability of the city.

Viyellatex cuts carbon emissions by 25pc (The Daily Star, April 29, 2014)
Viyellatex Group, one of the leading garment exporters havereduced carbon emissions by more than 25 percent over the five years since 2009. According toSystain, a Germany-based environmental consulting firm, the management of the company has put major focus on improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions. Viyellatex replaced conventional fluorescent tube lights with efficient ones and replaced all conventional sewing machine motors with servo-motors, which require half the electricity, to reduce emissions.The group also installed a heat recovery system to form condensate from steam in the dyeing section, and uses it to pre-heat feed water for the boiler. Viyellatex also recovers heat from generators to use in a similar way and uses evaporative cooling instead of conventional air conditioning.

Telco prices Bangladesh’s first dollar bond (Finance Asia, April 28, 2014)

Banglalink sold $300 million five-year notes—the first dollar-denominated bonds from Bangladesh—as the mobile operator plans to boost its business and refinance existing debt.A bond is a debt instrument that enables the issuing company to raise funds by promising to repay a lender in line with terms of a contract.Banglalink's bonds will have a re-offer price of 99.008 percent with a yield to maturity of 8.875 percent, it said in a statement. The transaction is expected to close on May 6. Banglalink, the nation's second largest mobile operator after Grameenphone, is rated B1 by Moody's and B+ by Standard & Poor's—both with a stable outlook. 

40pc food poisonous (The Daily Star, April 28, 2014)

Banned pesticides that cause serious health hazards have been found in fruits, vegetables, milk and milk products and dry fish, according to a FAO-sponsored test at a government laboratory. The presence of toxic substances in the food samples was three to 20 times the limits set by the European Union. Forty percent of the 82 samples contained pesticides that had been banned more than one and a half decades ago for high toxicity.The banned pesticides include DDT (Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane), Aldrin, Chlordane and Heptachlor that are extremely harmful to humans.Carrot, bean, tomato, lettuce, capsicum, banana, apple, pineapple, mango and milk were contaminated with highly toxic pesticides, which heavy metals were detected in  samples of rice, turmeric, poultry meat and fruit juice. Arsenic and chromium were present above safe limits in three of 13 samples, and formalin was found in coriander, mango and shrimp and antibiotics were found  in chicken and fish.

US urged to cut duty on RMG (The Daily Star, April 28, 2014)

Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed has urged the visiting delegation of the United States Trade Representatives to reduce discriminatory duty on shipments of garment items to make Bangladeshi products more competitive in the American market.Bangladesh pays the second highest duty for export to the US but as one of the least developed countries it was supposed to enjoy zero-tariff benefit from the American market, he said.The duty structure for Bangladeshi products is discriminatory as other competing countries pay much less tariff on exports to the US.Of the yearly export of Bangladeshi products to the US market, 95 percent are garment items. Ticfa is a platform for settling trade disputes between the two countries. The deal was signed in Washington in November last year.

17,500 RMG workers lose jobs following inspection (Dhaka Tribune, April 27, 2014)

Some 17,500 workers became jobless following the closure of 16 garment factories in Dhaka after the inspection by Accord, an association of European garment buyers.President of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) Atiqul Islam said that the number of jobless garment workers would reach 100,000 in next three months and 500,000 in next 5 months if the inspection continued.He also said that the buyers would start detailed engineering assessment of the factory structures from July next and about 1.5 million workers were at risk of losing their jobs.He said Dhaka had 769 factories in shared buildings, while 1,434 factories are located in multipurpose buildings.

Bangladeshranks 31st in Hopkins professor's index (Dhaka Tribune, April 26, 2014)

Bangladesh has been ranked 31st among 90 countries in an index, a research by a professor at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.The index was calculated by summing the unemployment rate, lending rate and inflation rate minus the percent change in real GDP per capita, author Hanke said in his paper.Venezuela topped as the most miserable country in the world with a index of 79.4%, with inflation as its major contributing factor. Bangladesh was ranked at 31 with a index of 20.8% with interest rate as its major contributing factor. However, Bangladesh is better-off compared to South Asian neighbours India and Pakistan which are ranked at 21 and 28 respectively in the list. The least miserable country was Japan with an index of 5.41%.

Study: Bangladesh Factories Remain Dangerous (Wall  Street Journal, April 25, 2014)

A year after the deadly collapse of the Rana Plaza building, many factories in Bangladesh remain dangerous places to work. Data released this week by Asia Inspection, which audits factories in 45 countries for global brands, said the number of audits focusing on worker safety, child labor and building inspections rose 136% in the last year. Even so, factories received lower scores on these audits this year than in 2013, according to Asia Inspection. Bangladesh factories scored an average of 5.85 this April, down from 5.98 a year ago, on a scale of 0-10, where 10 represents the best score.